Motivation and Personality Traits of Students in Kinesiology: Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Students

Background: The strength of motivation, as well as personality traits, are an essential determinant of people`s behavior. The level of motivation will only point to the strength of focus in achieving the projected activity. Personality represents those characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of behavior. Four factors influence how we respond to any given situation: our genetic make-up, our past experience, the nature of the situation in which we find ourselves and our free will. Eysenck et al (1982) proposed that people high in extroversion and psychoticism tend to have pro-sport attitudes. This is because personality is primarily determined by genetics.

Aim: The research was conducted with the aim of establishing the characteristics of motivation and the personality traits of male and female students of kinesiology and possible differences in the appearance of the same.

Methods: Three tests were conducted: General achievement motivation (Havelka & Lazarević), Sports achievement motivation (Havelka & Lazarevic,) and Eysenck’s EPQ. The study included a sample of 64 male students and 86 female students. Data processing, descriptive statistics as well as variance analysis were performed using statistical statistics package Statistica 13 (TIBCO Software Inc., 2017; Statistica, data analysis software system, version 13. http://statistica.io.).

Results: The obtained data present male students (M=12.58; SD=5.5 (M=mean; SD= standard deviation)) scoring significantly higher on the general scale (p .00) than female ones (M=10.37; SD=4.52). Male students (M=13.56; SD=4.68) also appear to be significantly more motivated than female athletes (M=11.56; SD=4.32) when it comes to sports achievement (p .01). Male students were presented as an emotionally more stable sample, projecting statistically significantly more strongly on scales of positive emotional responses to both general and sports achievement. At the same time, male students showed lower projections on scales of negative emotional responses to the motives of general and sports achievement, as well as on the scale of neuroticism at EPQ. Female students (M=16.27; SD=3.36) were presented as statistically significantly stronger projected on the extraversion scale than male students (M=15.08; SD=3.75) (p .05).

Discussion and Conclusion: The investigated sample points to similar relationships between the male and female population involved in physical activity compared to the research so far carried out. The only specific feature found among women students in the examined sample is a significantly higher level of extraversion than male students.